Israel is a country where the same drivers who cuss you and flip you the bird will immediately pull over and offer you all forms of help if you look like you need it.

Israel is the only country in the world with bus drivers and taxi drivers who read Spinoza and Maimonides.

Israel is the only country in the world where no one cares what rules say when an important goal can be achieved by bending them.

Israel is the only country in the world where reservists are bossed around and commanded by officers, male and female, younger than their own children.

Israel is the only country in the world where “small talk” consists of loud, angry debate over politics and religion.

Israel is the only country in the world where the coffee is already so good that Starbucks went bankrupt trying to break into the local market.

Israel is one of the few places in the world where the sun sets into the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel is the only country in the world whose soldiers eat three sets of salads a day, none of which contain any lettuce (which is not really a food), and where olives are a food and even a main course in a meal, rather than something one tosses into a martini.

Israel is the only country in the world where one is unlikely to be able to dig a cellar without hitting ancient archaeological artifacts.

Israel is the only country in the world where the graffiti is in Hebrew.

Israel is the only country in the world where the “black folks” walking around all wear yarmulkes.

Israel is the only country in the world where the ultra-Orthodox Jews beat up the police and not the other way around.

Israel is the only country in the world where bank robbers kiss the mezuzah as they leave with their loot.

Israel is the only country in the world that has the weather and landscape of California without the earthquakes.

Israel is the only country in the world where everyone on a flight gets to know one another before the plane lands. In many cases, they also get to know the pilot and all about his health and marital status

Israel is the only country in the world where no one has a foreign accent because everyone has a foreign accent.

Israel is the only country in the world where people cuss using dirty words in Russian or Arabic because Hebrew has never developed them.

Israel is the only country in the world where patients visiting physicians end up giving the doctor advice.

Israel is the only country in the world where everyone strikes up conversations while waiting in lines.

Israel is the only country in the world where people call an attache case a “James Bond” and the “@” sign is called a “strudel.”

Israel is the only country in the world where there is the most mysterious and mystical calm ambiance in the streets on Yom Kippur, which cannot be explained unless you have experienced it.

Sunsets in Jerusalem are gorgeous every evening

Israel is the only country in the world where people read English, write Hebrew, and joke in Yiddish

The Israelite Tribal Warriors of G-d: With no denial of G-d given ruaH ha-kodesh–the Shechinah granted to special Jewish men of valor-there is an actual warrior art that lies behind the story of two teenagers, the sons of Jacob, who single-handed waged war against an entire Canaanite city, slaying all their men. At the end of their sojourn in Egypt, their descendants, the Israelites emerge from the darkest, most difficult hour of their slavery as an armed force of 600,000 foot soldier’s; men, women and children were given ruaH ha-kodesh– the Shechinah. Divinely inspired martial arts were something the Israelites had maintained in Egypt and throughout the ancient times of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Israelite shepherd’s staff is in deed known as a most lethal weapon charged with Ani Ma’amin.

Historical accounts abound with Joshua and the Israelites entering the Promised Land. In addition the accounts of Shamgar ben `Anath, with nothing but a simple cattle goad, would slay 600 enemies. Samson, with only the jaw-bone of a donkey in hand, slew 1000 Philistine men. And the young teenage David, the shepherd son in his family, would slay 200 Philistines for the hand of King Saul’s daughter. References to the incredible bravery and military prowess of Jewish war heroes do not end with these biblical accounts. From the Maccabees, they continue down to the Roman era in the Jerusalem Talmud recalling the feats of the men chosen for Bar Kokhba’s army, and the account by Josephus of Jews fending off the Romans with their bare hands. From there they continue in the writings of Shmuel haNaggid, at once the greatest Torah authority of his generation and commander of the armies of Granada.

Consider the oral tradition of the Jewish People such as the unique conditions at the Mishkan (tabernacle) at Shiloh (see Mishnah ZevaHim, Ch.14 from “ba’u le-Shiloh”). These were committed to writing only 1,200 years after Shiloh was destroyed and abandoned, and the same laws hadn’t applied since the First Temple was erected! Although the site was unknown and covered over for centuries by the time the Mishnah was written down, it has been uncovered by archaeologists recently for all to visit. Any visitor to the uncovered ruins of the tabernacle at Shiloh today can see the countless shards of smashed pottery along the perimeter of the surrounding valley, where the ancients would smash their clay vessels after eating of the holy offerings. Although this hadn’t been practiced in the 1,200 years since Shiloh was destroyed, the memory was maintained orally all that time, until it was committed to writing.

Maccabees: The Maccabees (Makabim) were a Jewish national liberation movement that fought for and won independence from Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, who was succeeded by his infant son Antiochus V Eupator. The Maccabees founded the Hasmonean royal dynasty and established Jewish independence in the Land of Israel for about one hundred years, from 164 BCE to 63 BCE.

From the First Temple, there are several legends that place Israelite soldiers settling in Arabia forty-two years before the destruction of the First Temple. It is said that under the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Israelites, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen. The Jews of southern Yemen have a legend that they are the descendants of Judeans who settled in the area before the destruction of the Second Temple. These Judeans supposedly belonged to a brigade dispatched by King Herod to assist the Roman legions fighting in the region. Unlike the Jews of northern Yemen the Habbani Jews wore a Jambiyya or curved knife, Matznaph (turban) and Avne`t (sash). It was also common for sultans in Arabia to use Habbani Jews as soldiers in their armies or as personal guards. Habbani Jews sometimes served as mercenaries; Abdullah I of Jordan, who preferred Circassian and other non-Arab bodyguards, had a number of Habbani Jewish guardsmen, including Sayeed Sofer and his brothers Salaah and Saadia.

Mountain Jews of Daghestan: The Song of the Mountain Jews - And we, the Tats. We, Samson warriors, Bar Kochba’s heirs…we went into battles and bitterly, heroically struggled for our freedom. The Jews of Daghestan lived isolated in one of the most remote, impenetrable areas in the world for many centuries. They have been historically known for their fierce and war-like nature and expert horsemanship. In dress and custom they were hardly distinguishable from other Caucasian fighting people in the region. They wore the Circassian dress and always were heavily armed, even sleeping without having removed their weapons. The Mountain Jews may be descendants of Persian-Jewish soldiers who were stationed in the Caucasus by the Sasanian kings in the fifth or sixth century to protect the area from the onslaughts of the Huns and other nomadic invaders from the east. Under the impact of the invading Turkish hordes, later generations of Jewish inhabitants of the Caucasian lowlands were forced to migrate even further north to Daghestan. Though they are considered dhimmi by their surrounding Muslim population, the Mountain Jews owned land and were known to be fierce, not hesitating to defend, by sword or the rifle, their family, religion, or personal dignity. They differ from their Christian and Mohammedan neighbors in speech, using the Tat language, which is a combination of Persian and Hebrew. Their writing is a mixture of square characters and Rashi.

Samuel ibn ‘Adiya Arabian warrior poet: Poet and warrior; lived in Arabia in the first half of the 6th century CE. His mother was of the royal tribe of Ghassan, while his father, according to some, was descended from Aaron, or, according to others, from Kahin, son of Harun and progenitor of the Jewish tribes of Kuraitza and Nathir. Samuel owned a castle near Taima (eight hours north of Medina), built by his grandfather ‘Adiya and called, from its mixed color, Al-Ablak. It was situated on a high hill and was a halting-place for travelers to and from Syria. More than for his poetic talents Samuel ibn ‘Adiya is famous for his connection with the warrior-poet and prince Amru al-Kais, which won for him the epithet “faithful”, and gave rise to the saying, still common among the Arabs, “more faithful than Samuel.” Samuel ibn ‘Adiya’s reputation as a poet rests upon one of the first poems in the collection called the “Hamasa.” It is full of warlike vigor and courage, and manifests a high ideal of honor.

The Jewish Warriors and Asian Oriental Marital Arts: There are many theories surrounding when Jews first settled in China. Despite trading in China since at least the 9th century, many modern scholars “unanimously” believe an actual community was founded in Kaifeng City, Henan province during the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty. However, one of the three stelae (stone edicts) left by the community claims “they entered and settled in China during the Han Dynasty”, almost 800 years earlier. The stele dating 1489 states that Song Dynasty founder Emperor Taizu (mistakenly referred to as Ming Taizu) went on military campaigns to “pacify the Under Heaven” during the early years of his reign. When the armies successfully gained control of China and solidified the power of the Song Dynasty, Emperor Taizu bestowed the “sinicized” Jewish soldiers with land “to settle and enjoy their occupation in the villages”. Jewish soldiers continued to serve in the Chinese military through the Southern Song Dynasty.

The stele dating 1512 states “those who subdued the enemy and resisted aggression and were ‘boundlessly loyal to the country’” were successful in their endeavors. The term “boundlessly loyal to the country” refers to the famous tattoo on the back of General Yue Fei, a noted patriot and martyr. So the loyalty of the Jewish soldiers was compared to that of Yue Fei. The same source even claims that “Israelites” served in Yue Fei’s armies and helped to combat the Jurchen armies invading China during that time. Modern scholars that translate the 1489 stele mention how a physician named Ancheng received a sizable amount of money from “Prince Ding of Zhou prefecture” to rebuild the community’s destroyed synagogue in 1421. In 1423, Ancheng was given the surname “Chao” by the emperor himself, received the “rank of Military Commissioner in the Embroidered Uniform Guard” and was promoted to “Assistant Military Commissioner of Zhejiang.” However, a journal entry from 1965 formally corrected a translation error that proceeding authors still make today. The physician Ancheng was “apparently a romantic fabrication” and the actual person was “a common soldier named An San, who belonged to the Honan Central Bodyguard Division”. He had warned the Yongle Emperor of a plot against him by Prince Zhou, An’s military commander and benefactor of the Jewish community, and was subsequently promoted (as mentioned above) and given the “properly Chinese name Chao Ch’eng (Chao the Honest), and in due course became a notable leader of the community and ancestor of the principal Jewish clan.”

Jewish defenders during the First Crusade (1099): Jews fought side-by-side Egyptian Fatimad soldiers to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders during the First Crusade. Saint Louis University Professor Thomas Madden, author of A Concise History of the Crusades, claims the “Jewish Defenders” of the city knew the rules of warfare and retreated to their synagogue to “prepare for death” since the Crusaders had breached the outer walls. However, another source states the joint Jewish-Egyptian forces retreated from the walls and made their last stand against the crusaders by the Temple Mount, only then going to their respective houses of worship once they were overpowered. According to the Muslim chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi, “The Jews assembled in their synagogue, and the Crusaders burned it over their heads.”

Benjamin of Tudela (twelfth century) found an independent Jewish warrior tribe living in the highlands of Khorasan near Nisapur, numbering many thousand families, regarding themselves as descendants of Dan, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali, under a Jewish prince of the name of Joseph Amarkala ha-Levi. Another independent Jewish tribe bent upon warlike expeditions is mentioned by Benjamin as living in the district of Tehama in Yemen. His historical journey to visit far-off Jewish communities was undertaken by from 1165 to 1173 that crossed and tracked some of the areas that are today in the geographic area of Yemen. Tudela’s trek began as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land intended to catalogue the Jewish communities on the route to the Holy Land so as to provide a guide to where hospitality may have been found for Jews traveling to the Holy Land. He took the “long road” stopping frequently, meeting people, visiting places, describing occupations and giving a demographic count of Jews in every town and country.

With the same steadfast dedication by which Yemenite Jewry maintained the original pronunciation of Hebrew and scribal traditions, the Habani Yemenites preserved the original martial art of the ancient Hebrew warriors, the Banei Abir. Referred to as “Qesheth”, it is specifically mentioned in Samuel II 1:18, and in the Book of Yashar. Although not understood, by most rabbis of our generation. Israel’s unique warrior prowess is referred to throughout the width and breadth of our literature, from the Bible down the ages to the MaLBiM (19^th century).

Jewish soldiers in Spain: Jewish soldiers assisted Childeric in his war against Wamba. The Moors are said to have entrusted to Jews the guardianship of the conquered cities of Spain. Under Alfonso VI of Castile, in 1068, 40,000 Jews fought against Yusuf ibn Teshufin in the battle of Zalaka, with such heroism that the battle-field was covered with their bodies. Under Alfonso VIII of Castile, (1166-1214) there were many warriors among the wealthy and cultured Jews of Toledo that fought bravely against the Moors. Alfonso X., called “the Wise”, had many Jews in his army; and in the capture of Seville (1298) the Jewish warriors distinguished themselves so highly that, in compensation for their services, Alfonso allotted to them certain lands for the formation of a Jewish village. He also transferred to them three mosques which they turned into synagogues.

The cruel fanaticism of the Moors had alienated the Jews, who were now won over to the Christians by the tolerant rule of the latter. Jews fought bravely at the side of Pedro the Cruel in defense of the cities of Toledo, Briviesca, and Burgos, against Henry de Trastamara, his brother, and had to pay for their loyalty to their king either with their lives and the lives of their undefended wives and children, or, as the Jews of Burgos had to do, with a heavy ransom to the relentless victor.

Jews of Tirdirma, Mali: According to a West African Arabic record called the Tarikh el-Fetash, in 1402 in Tiridirma near the Niger River lived a community of Jews known as the Bani Israeel who were said to have seven rulers, 333 wells, and a well trained army. The record suggests that their presence in the area preceded the rise of Islam.

The Jewish Legion was the name for five battalions of Jewish volunteers established as the British Army’s 38th through 42nd (Service) Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers. The initial unit, known as the Zion Mule Corps, was formed in 1914-1915 during World War I, when Britain was at war against the Ottoman Turks, as Zionists around the world saw an opportunity to promote the idea of a Jewish National Homeland. Nili (I Samuel 15:29; transliteration: Netzakh Yisrael Lo Yishaker, literal translation: “The Eternity of Israel does not lie”) was a Jewish espionage network which assisted the United Kingdom in its fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Land of Israel during World War I.

In the early 20th century, Russian Jews were active in a variety of political movements. Many joined revolutionary movements such as Esers, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Many Jews served in Makhnov’s “Black” Army. Others turned to counter-revolution. The Jewish regiment was an infantry regiment formed in February 1919 during the Russian Civil War 1917-1922 as a part of the forces of ataman Grigory Semyonov which acted in the Trans-baikal region. Most of the soldiers were from Chita and Nerchinsk. The regiment was formed by the Chita Jewish community. The staffers and soldiers of the regiment were Jews from various social classes, from craftsmen to traders’ sons. Some Jews were reluctant to accept the Soviet regime after being eyewitness to the Red Terror, instability, and upsurge of crime of 1918. There were 170 soldiers, 7 sergeants, 4 low rank officers, and 2 captains.. The Jewish regiment took part in many actions against local partisans. The most significant achievement of the regiment was participation in the defeat of the internationalist partisan battalion (150 strong) camped on the northeastern village of Tupik. The partisans, mostly Hungarians, were former prisoners of war (POW) who were sent to the Transbaikal region during World War I.

The Żydowski Związek Wojskowy (ŻZW), Polish for Jewish Military Union was an underground resistance organization operating during World War II in the area of the Warsaw Ghetto and fighting during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was formed primarily of former officers of the Polish Army in late 1939, soon after the start of the German occupation of Poland. The Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa Polish for Anti-Fascist Military Organization was an underground organization formed in 1942 in the Ghetto in Białystok by former officers of the Polish Land Forces. It took part in the Białystok Ghetto Uprising. The Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ŻOB), Polish for the Jewish Combat Organization; called in Yiddish - a World War II resistance movement, which was instrumental in engineering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (although the ZZW Jewish resistance organization claimed otherwise). The organization also took part in other resistance activities.

The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group was a military formation of the British Army that served in Europe during the Second World War. Although the brigade was formed in 1944, some of its experienced personnel had been employed against the Axis powers in Greece, the Middle East and East Africa. More than 30,000 Middle East Jews volunteered to serve in the British Armed Forces, 734 of whom died during the war. The Special Interrogation Group (SIG) (some sources interpret this acronym as Special Identification Group or Special Intelligence Group) was a British Army unit organized from German-speaking Jewish volunteers from the British Mandate of Palestine. The SIG performed commando and sabotage operations against the Nazis behind front lines in the Western Desert Campaign during World War II.

The Jewish Resistance Movement (Tnu’at HaMeri HaIvri, Hebrew Rebellion Movement) was an umbrella group for militant Jewish underground movements in the British Mandate of Palestine. The group existed between the years 1945 and 1946, and coordinated armed attacks against the British military. The group was founded after World War II, disappointed in British policies towards the movement.

The Haganah (The Defense) was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948. The predecessor of Haganah was Ha-Shomer (The Guild of Watchman) established in 1907. It was a small group of Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. At no time did the group have more than 100 members. After the 1920 Arab riots and 1921 Jaffa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British (whom the League of Nations had given a mandate over Palestine in 1920 for the purpose of establishing a Jewish national home) had no desire to confront local Arab gangs over their attacks on Palestinian Jews. Realizing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah to protect their farms and Kibbutzim. In addition to guarding Jewish communities, the role of the Haganah was to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs. In the period 1920–1929; the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah “units” were localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim.

Following the Arab massacres of 1929, the Haganah’s role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment, transforming from an untrained militia to a capable underground army.

The Palmach (Plugot Mahatz, Strike Companies) was the regular fighting force of the Haganah, the unofficial army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the British Mandate of Palestine. It was established on May 15, 1941 and by the war of 1948 had grown to three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. Being a Palmachnik (Palmach member) was considered not only as performing military duties, but also as a way of life. Significant leaders of the Palmach include Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigal Allon and future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Palmach contributed significantly to Israeli culture and ethos, well beyond its military contribution. Its members formed the backbone of the Israel Defense Forces high command for many years, and were prominent in Israeli politics, literature and culture.

The Palmach was established by the British military and Haganah on May 15, 1941 to help the British protect Palestine from the Nazi German threat. They were also to assist Allied forces with the planned invasion of Syria and Lebanon, then held by Vichy French forces. British experts trained the Palmach special soldiers and equipped them with small arms and explosives. However, after the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1943, the British ordered the dismantling of Palmach. Instead the whole organization went underground.

Lehi: (Hebrew acronym for Lohamei Herut Israel, “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”) also known as the “Stern Group” or “Stern Gang”, was an armed underground Zionist faction in Mandatory Palestine that had as its goal the eviction of the British from Palestine to allow unrestricted immigration of Jews and the re-formation of a Jewish state. The name of the group became “Lehi” only after the death of its founder, Avraham Stern.

Irgun: (Ha’Irgun Ha’Tsvai Ha’Leumi B’Eretz Yisrael, “National Military Organization in the Land of Israel”) was a clandestine Zionist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948, as a militant offshoot of the earlier and larger Haganah (Hebrew: “The Defense”) Jewish paramilitary organization. In Israel, Irgun is commonly referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the Hebrew initials. For secrecy reasons, people often referred to the Irgun, in the time in which it operated, as Haganah Bet (Hebrew: literally “Defense ‘B’ ” or “Second Defense”), Haganah Ha’leumit or Ha’ma’amad. The group made attacks against Arab and Palestinian groups a central part of their initial efforts. It was armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism, expressed by Ze’ev Jabotinsky as that “every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state”. The organization was a political predecessor movement to Israel’s right-wing Herut (or “Freedom”) party, which led to today’s Likud party.

The most well-known attack by Irgun was the bombing of King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946. British authorities condemned Irgun as terrorists already in the 1930s. However, Irgun also had considerable support within the Zionist movement.

Israeli Security Forces: Israeli Security Forces is used to describe a group of organizations which are charged with the preservation of Israel’s territory and civilian public. The organizations are independent but cooperate with each other, some are volunteers, some are professional, and others are both. The list includes military institutions, government agencies, law enforcement organizations, and first aid organizations: Israel Police; Israel Border Police; Yamam; Civil Guard (Israel). Israeli Intelligence Community: Aman; Mossad; Shabak.

Israel Defense Forces: The (IDF) Tzva HaHagana LeYisrael, “Defense Military of Israel”, commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym, pronounced Tzahal), is the name of Israel’s military forces, comprising the: Israeli Army; Israeli Air Force; Israeli Sea Corps.

Habbani Jews - Ancient and Modern times: In the 16th century, thanks to the advice of a Habbani Jew Suleman the Wise, the Jews received a special quarter of Habban. In 1912 Zionist emissary Shmuel Yavnieli came into contact with Habbani Jews who ransomed him when he was captured and robbed by eight Bedouin in southern Yemen. Yavnieli wrote about the Jews of Habban, describing them in the following way. The Jews in these parts are held in high esteem by everyone in Yemen and Aden. They are said to be courageous, always with their weapons and wild long hair, and the names of their towns are mentioned by the Jews of Yemen with great admiration.

Describing the route followed by most Habbanis who participated in the Israeli airlift, Operation Magic Carpet: The way [to the airfield] was generally in the direction of IHwar. In IHwar they would stay for some time, collecting food, money, and afterwards continue from there to Sheikh `Uthman and `Aden, to the camp Hashid and from there they would wait their turn for the airplane to the Land [of Israel]. The problem was getting to camp Hashid, for they [the locals] wouldn’t always allow entry, and not to everyone. Therefore the first emigrants remained a relatively long time in Sheikh `Uthman. And when the pogrom in `Aden happened, they were in danger.

According to Rabbi Yoseph Maghori-Kohen: The Habbanis were mighty heroes. I heard a lot from elders in my youth about the Habbanis, about their wars, how they would fight ‘according to names’. They would make the shape of the [Hebrew] letters with their hands, and by this they would be victorious. Also the Shar`abim–from the city of Shar`ab–were strong, but not to the same degree as the Habbanis. Once in Yemen there was a wild tribe of murderous Arab warriors that conquered town after town, slaughtering whomever they found. Thus they moved forward from settlement to settlement: killing, destroying–may their names by blotted out–until they approached a city of Jews, 13,000 Jews roughly. Everyone felt hopeless-even the Arabs among them put up their hands, searching for a place to escape. Suddenly ten [Jewish] Habbanis arrived and waged war with them–ten against a thousand–and vanquished all of them. Not even one of those warriors was left alive, and not one of the ten fell. Eyewitnesses Gamar bath Hassan `Adeni, Sa`id bin Yusuf and Sa`id bin Musa Mif`i, who were present and participated at the time of the uprising, and presently live in Salame [Kfar Shalem] recount the might of those Habbani Jewish individuals who fought with bravery and strength, and that they killed a great number of savage Arabs. In truth, the Jews were practically unarmed. Recorded here are actually the very weapons wrenched from the same Arabs who had attacked them, Ma`atuf continues that the only Jew to fall in that battle, was a single Habbani Jew, Hillel Sa`id bin Mansoor bin Sa`id Bireyah, who was hit by rifle fire from afar by one of the Arab conscripts to the British army. (Arming the local savage tribes with firearms was one strategy of British appeasement at the time.)

The story is as follows: A wild, vicious Arab tribe was plundering the Hadramaut region, destroying town after town, massacring the inhabitants. They came upon a town full of Jews, about 13,000. Even the Arabs among them threw up their hands, in total despair. Suddenly 10 Jewish Habbani warriors came on the scene, and waged war on their behalf, against the force of 1,000 bloodthirsty marauders. When they were finished, every last Arab marauder was dead, and not one of their own. The elder rabbi even went on to describe the deadly harpoon-like weapon the Habbanis used. Though isolated, the Jews of Habban did maintain some level of contact with other Yemenite Jewish communities though such contact was infrequent and usually resulted in disputes over some point of Jewish law.

While complete details in the Biblical account of a system of fighting forms are not extant, the Midrashic, Talmudic, and Rabbinic accounts testify to fighting and combat strategies used by the ancient Israelites as well as legendary depictions of Israelite combatants. In Yemen this was known by tradition to be the most ancient nussaH in the region from the original Hebrew arrivals to Yemen during the reigns of King David and Solomon. On the surface, it is an ancient discipline of deadly combat techniques based on the both Paleo-Hebrew and Ashurith-Hebrew [the common square font] alphabets, and organized into tribal sets according to their various methods and approaches.

Abir techniques carry a spiritual power that must be seen (and felt) to be believed. Beyond its fighting application, Abir is also meditative discipline that can bring the warrior to perfect joy and nullification of the ego: humility that enables the warrior to become a conduit of G-d’s Will (in Hebrew, “Sinor” [conduit] and “RaSon” [Divine Will] are of the same letters). The tradition also includes the tribal dances of the Hebrews, such as King David danced before the Ark. Habbanis say, “many die sanctifying G-d’s Name, but the Abir lives sanctifying His Name.”

In Yemen, it is generally well-known that in this isolated region, Jews preserved Torah learning traditions that were long lost elsewhere, such as authentic Hebrew pronunciation and the original scribal traditions for preparing animal hides for ritual items prescribed by Torah law. Many elder Yemenite Jews are aware of how the Habbanis alone, among the various Jewish communities in Yemen, which flourished in the region long before the rise of Islam; lived a life of freedom, never allowing themselves to be subjugated to “dhimmi” status–the demeaning second-class rank of non-Muslims. Unlike the men of the Baladi and Shammi communities who were under the ban, the Habbanis proudly wore full turbans, rode on horseback as expert horsemen, and wore their weapons openly. The Arabs feared them.

The freedom of the Habbanim, was maintained by a legacy of unmatched warriorship. It was a tradition preserved from time immemorial which their freedom and very survival depended upon. It was this mightiest of Abir warrior chiefs who caused the Al Wahidi and Aleewa sheikhdoms, the two largest warring tribes of Southern Arabia, to put down their weapons against one another, coming under his authority as their protector and advisor. This thwarted a plan to massacre all the Jews of Habban and greater Yemen.

An anthropological Master’s thesis on the community by Ma`atuf Sa`adia bin YiS’Haq of blessed memory from the town of Bareqeth documents: Habbani Jewry [of Hatzarmavet] in the Last Generations); of the Jewish history at the Bar Ilan University was completed. Sa`adia published his historical and anthropological research on Habbani Jewry in 1987, providing testimony to the Arab pogroms against the community as they prepared for their emigration to Israel at the beginning of the state. The Israelite warrior discipline was preserved in its purity by one family, the Sofer-Ma`atuf DoH family.

They have maintained a presence both in Yemen and Hevron from time immemorial. The patriarch, Brihim bin Hassan (Avraham ben Hoshen, est. 5621-5731) was representative of the Jewish communities of Yemen to the king. Moreover, Ma`atuf Sa`adiah bin YiS’Haq of blessed memory, in his aforementioned work, Brihim “turned into the highest religious-halakhic authority in his time”. His own father, YiS’Haq bin Salem of blessed memory remembered the great mori-chief in vivid detail, although being just a child at the time. According to the family’s rich oral tradition, he was the scion of a long dynasty of Israelite warrior clan heads stretching back to the times of King David: He was the 49^th “Aluf Abir”, a title passed down from grandfather to a chosen grandson: the inheritor of the full Abir warrior heritage. (The other children were also trained, but not in the full range of this vast martial tradition.) Before circumstances forced him to escape the region to join his kin in Israel, he was protector of the British military brass in Hadramaut before Yemen’s independence. A number of his esteemed sons and brothers became personal guards to Arab kings of the region. This included Abdullah ibn Hussein of Jordan the royal house of Ibn Sa’ud, and the sheikh of the Al Khuwaiti tribe (Oman)-the most feared and powerful sheikhdom in Southern Arabia at the close of the British colonial period. The Jewish Habbani chief passed the hierarchy to his grandson Yehoshua Avner.

Under his grandfather and father’s wing, Yehoshua Sofer mastered the art of his forebears by the age of 25. Having grown up together with the Aluf Abir’s father, Ya`aqov Moshe (Awad bin Brihim) in the same five-storey house, ‘Beith il DoH’ (lit. ‘House of DoH’, i.e. the DoH clan), Awad bin S’leiman has been an indispensable informant for us. Out of numerous unique characteristics of Abir that stand alone among the warrior arts, five are as follows:

1. The curved, bow-like motion of all arm and leg movements (hence the name “Qesheth”, meaning “bow”). This is especially noticeable in the leg strikes, which are circular in motion. It is unlike any fighting system that exists.
2. The exactly parallel treatment of arms and legs, as opposed to the dichotomous way the upper and lower limbs are viewed in foreign systems.
3. The continual, fluid, dance motion in Abir, rooted in a spirit of pure, simple joy and humble surrender of one’s will before G-d. As opposed to the arrogant focusing of one’s own energy, common in other forms, the Abir warrior strives to become a perfect vessel of Divine Will, and a conduit of the energy of Creation.
4. A fighting system devised of the distinct shapes of an ancient alphabet. A tradition from time immemorial, the Hebrew warriors fight according to the distinct, sacred shapes of the modern and paleo-Hebrew letters. No other system is comprised of anything like it.
5. A received tradition from the Abir’s ancestors through the ages is a repeated cry of praise to G-d that punctuates our workout: “Adonenu, Bor’enu, YoSrenu, Roph’enu!” (Translation: “our Master, our Creator, our Maker, our Healer!”) These and other Hebrew call-and-response cries between the Abir trainer and warriors-in-training are entirely unique in the world.

Abir of importance is an element of the practice of Torah Judaism, one must be torah observant. It incorporates a keen awareness of Divine Providence; and how we must depend on HaShem for our bodily condition and the circumstances; since it is more than a fighting system; it is a spiritual way of life. It also involves desert training with expertise in horsemanship and more! Abir is an investment in the physical and spiritual health of the Jewish People, bringing Jews from every background the opportunity to train in one of the most effective martial arts on earth, which reclaims their heritage and G-d’s Commandments. For more info, visit the Abir Warrior Arts web site in Israel.

According to Jewish scripture, Noah’s ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat, a mountain in the Taurus range of ancient Armenia which is now a part of Turkey near the modern borders Armenia and Iran. Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian of the first century, notes Jewish origins for many of the cities in Asia Minor, though much of his sourcing for these passages is traditional. Biblical mention of Jewish populations in Turkey is widespread: Iconium (now called Konya in modern Turkey) is said to have a synagogue and Ephesus is mentioned as having a synagogue. Based on physical evidence, there has been a Jewish community in Asia Minor since the 4th century BCE, most notably in the city of Sardis.

The subsequent Roman and Byzantine Empires included sizable Greek-speaking Jewish communities in their Anatolian domains which seem to have been relatively well-integrated and enjoyed certain legal immunities. The size of the Jewish community was not affected by the attempts of some Byzantine emperors to forcibly convert the Jews of Anatolia to Christianity, as these attempts met with very little success. Although there is some evidence of occasional hostility by the Byzantine populations and authorities, no systematic persecution of the type endemic at that time in Western Europe (pogroms, burning at the stake, mass expulsions, etc.) is believed to have occurred in Byzantium.

The first Jewish synagogue linked to Ottoman rule is Etz ha-Hayyim in Bursa which passed to Ottoman authority in 1324. The synagogue is still in use, although the modern Jewish population of Bursa has shrunk to about 140 people.

The greatest influx of Jews into Asia Minor and the Ottoman Empire, however, occurred during the reign of Mehmed’s successor, Beyazid II (1481-1512), after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. The sultan issued a formal invitation to Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal, and they started arriving in the empire in great numbers.

The sultan is said to have exclaimed thus at the Spanish monarch’s lack of wisdom: “Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!” The Jews satisfied various needs in the Ottoman Empire: the Muslim Turks were largely uninterested in business enterprises and accordingly left commercial occupations to members of minority religions. They also distrusted the Christian subjects whose countries had only recently been conquered by the Ottomans and therefore it was natural to prefer Jewish subjects to which this consideration did not apply.

The Spanish Jews settled chiefly in Istanbul, Sarajevo, Salonica, Adrianople, Nicopolis, Jerusalem, Safed, Damascus, Egypt, and in Bursa, Tokat, Amasya in Anatolia. Smyrna was not settled by Spanish Jews until later. The Jewish population at Jerusalem increased from 70 families in 1488 to 1,500 at the beginning of the sixteenth century. That of Safed increased from 300 to 2,000 families and almost surpassed Jerusalem in importance. Damascus had a Sephardic congregation of 500 families. Istanbul had a Jewish community of 30,000 individuals with 44 synagogues. Bayazid allowed the Jews to live on the banks of the Golden Horn. Egypt, especially Cairo, received a large number of the exiles, who soon out-numbered the native Jews. Gradually, the chief center of the Sephardic Jews became Salonica, where the Spanish Jews soon outnumbered their co-religionists of other nationalities and, at one time, the original native inhabitants.

Although the status of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire may be embellished, it is undeniable that the tolerance they enjoyed was unprecedented. Under the millet system they were organized as a community on the basis of religion, alongside the other millets (e.g. Christian Orthodox, Armenian millets, etc.). In the framework of the millet they had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by the Hahambasi, the Chief Rabbi. There were no restrictions in the professions Jews could practice analogous to those common in Western Christian countries. There were restrictions in the areas Jews could live or work, but such restrictions were imposed on Ottoman subjects of other religions as well. Like all non-Muslims, Jews had to pay the harac (”head tax”), which corresponds to the charity tax Zakat which is paid by Muslims, and faced other restrictions in clothing, horse riding, army service etc., but they could occasionally be waived or circumvented.

Jews who reached high positions in the Ottoman court and administration include Mehmed II’s minister of Finance (”defterdar”) Hekim Yakup Pasa, his Portuguese physician Moses Hamon, Murad II’s physician Ishak Pasha, and Abraham de Castro, the master of the mint in Egypt.

During the Classical Ottoman period (1300-1600), the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed a certain level of prosperity. Compared with other Ottoman subjects, they were the predominant power in commerce and trade as well in diplomacy and other high offices. However, their prosperity was not a deep-rooted one. It did not rest on fixed laws or conditions, but depended wholly on the capriciousness of individual rulers. And with the waning of Ottoman power even that superficial prosperity vanished.

For example, at the same time the expelled Spanish Jews were invited to take refuge in the Empire, the forced deportation of large numbers of Jews to Istanbul, though not intended as an anti-Jewish measure, was perceived as an “expulsion” by the Jews.
During Murad IV (1623-40) the Jews of Jerusalem were persecuted by an Arab who had purchased the governorship of that city from the governor of the province.

During the reign of Ibrahim I (1640-49), there was a massacre of Ashkenazi Jews who were expecting the Messiah in the year 1648. The war with Venice in the first year of Ibrahim’s reign disrupted commerce and caused many Jews to relocate to Smyrna, where they could carry on their trade undisturbed.

In 1660, under Mehmet IV (1649-1687), Safat was destroyed by the Arabs; and in the same year there was a fire in Istanbul in which the Jews suffered severe losses. In 1678, Mehmet IV ordered the banishment of the Jews of Yemen to the Mawza Desert, an event which, despite its brief duration, remains in the collective memory of Yemeni Jews as a great tragedy.

An additional problem was the lack of unity among the Jews themselves. They had come to the Ottoman Empire from many lands, bringing with them their own customs and opinions, to which they clung tenaciously, and had founded separate congregations. The most traumatic event in this respect was the upheaval caused by self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. He was eventually caught by the Ottoman authorities and when given the choice between death and Islam, he opted for the latter. His remaining disciples converted to Islam too. Their descendants are today known as Donmeh.

By 1887, there were five Jewish members of the Ottoman parliament. The minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the Ottoman Empire, Oscar S. Straus, was a Jew. Straus was again minister from 1897 to 1900. In the war of 1885, although not admitted to the army, they gave pecuniary and other aid. In Adrianople 150 wagons were placed by them at the disposal of the government for the transportation of ammunition; and in the war of 1897 the Jews of Istanbul contributed 50,000 piasters to the army fund.

The Jewish population of Ottoman Empire had reached nearly 500,000 at the start of the 20th century. The troubled history of Turkey during the 20th century and the process of transforming the old Ottoman Empire into a modern Western nation-state after 1923 had a negative effect on the size of the Jewish community.
The planned deportation of Jews from Thrace and the associated anti-Jewish pogrom in 1934 was one of the events that caused insecurity among the Turkish Jews.

The effect of the 1942 Varlık Vergisi (”wealth tax”) was the greatest on non-Muslims, although in principle it was directed against all wealthy Turks. The “wealth tax” is still remembered as the “catastrophe” among the non-Muslims of Turkey and it had probably the most detrimental effect on the numbers of the Jewish community. Many people unable to pay the taxes were sent to labor camps and about 30,000 Jews emigrated. The tax was seen as a racist attempt to diminish the economic power of minorities in Turkey.

On the night of 6/7 September 1955, the Istanbul Pogrom was unleashed against the Greek, Jewish, and Armenian communities of Istanbul and other major Turkish cities. Although the damage was mainly material, more than 4,000 shops and 1,000 houses were destroyed and it deeply shocked minorities throughout the country. Hence, 10,000 Jews subsequently fled Turkey.
The present size of the Jewish Community is estimated at around 26,000 according to the Jewish Virtual Library. The vast majority live in Istanbul, with a community of about 2,500 in İzmir and other smaller groups located in Adana, Ankara, Bursa, Çanakkale, Iskenderun and Kirklareli. Sephardic Jews make up approximately 96% of Turkey’s Jewish population, while the rest are primarily Ashkenazic.

Turkish Jews are still legally represented by the Hahambasi, the Chief Rabbi. Rav Izak Haleva, is assisted by a religious Council made up of a Rosh Bet Din and three Hahamim. Thirty-five Lay Counselors look after the secular affairs of the Community and an Executive Committee of fourteen, the president of which must be elected from among the Lay Counselors, runs the daily affairs.
Turkey is the first country with a Muslim majority to formally recognize the State of Israel. Turkey and Israel have closely cooperated militarily and economically. In the book Israel’s Secret Wars, Benny Morris provides an account of how Mossad operatives based in Turkey infiltrated into Iraq and helped to orchestrate a number of Iraqi Kurdish uprisings to weaken the Iraqi government. Israel and Turkey have signed a multi-billion dollar project to build a series of pipelines from Turkey to Israel to supply gas, oil and other essentials to Israel.

The Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul has been attacked by Islamic militants three times. In 1986, terrorists gunned down 22 Jewish worshippers and wounded 6 during Sabbath services at Neve Shalom. In In 2003, a pair of truck bombs exploded outside Beth Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues, crowded with families celebrating bar mitzvahs, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 300. The flourishing period of Jewish literature in Turkey was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after the arrival of the Spanish exiles, though there had been Jewish intellectuals before this period too. Printing-presses and Talmud schools were established, and an active correspondence with Europe was maintained.

Map of Jewish Communities in Turkey

Painting of Turkish Jewish Man

Neve Shalom Synagogue, Istanbul, Turkey

Hemdat Israel Synagogue

Sultan Bayezid II sent Kemal Reis to save the Arabs and Sephardic Jews of Spain from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, and granted them permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire

Sardis Synagogue was a section of a large bath-gymnasium complex, that was in use for about 450–500 years.

On September 1856 a ceremony was held at the Zulfaris Synagogue commemorating Jewish soldiers in the French army who fought and fell alongside the Ottomans against the Russians during the Crimean war. A military unit under the command of Staff Colonel Garbi Bey was present at this ceremony.

About 89% of the people are ethnic Romanians, in contrast to its Slav or Hungarian neighbours but traces itself to Latin-speaking Romans who in the second and third centuries CE conquered and settled among the ancient Dacians, a Thracian people. As a result, the Romanian language, although containing elements of Slavic, Turkish, and other languages, is a Romance language related to French and Italian.

The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is todays Romanian territory. Jewish communities on what would later become Romanian territory were attested as early as the 2nd century, at a time when the Roman Empire had established its rule over Dacia. Inscriptions and coins have been found in such places as Sarmizegetusa and Orşova.

Early History as Part of the Ottoman Empire: From the Middle Ages to the modern times the Romanians lived in three distinct but neighbouring principalities: Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. Located in an area of intersection of the borders of several powerful kingdoms and empires, their territory became an area of dispute and, at the same time, of cultural confluence. In the second half of the 14th century a new threat against the independent Romanian lands emerged: the Ottoman Empire. After first setting foot on European soil in 1354, the Ottoman Turks began their rapid expansion on the continent.

The whole Balkan Peninsula became a Turkish-ruled territory, Constantinople was captured by Mohammed II (1453), Suleiman the Magnificent captured the city of Belgrade (1521), and the Hungarian kingdom disappeared following the battle of Mohacs (1526). Therefore, Wallachia and Moldavia were surrounded and they had to recognize for over three centuries the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire.

The end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century brought about changes in the politics of Central and Eastern Europe. The Ottoman Empire failed to capture Vienna in 1683 and following that, the Hapsburg Empire began its expansion to the southeast of Europe. The Austrian-Turkish peace treaty of Karlowitz (1699) sanctioned the annexation of Transylvania and its organization as an autonomous principality to Hapsburg Austria (since 1765 great principality), ruled by a governor. The Ottoman Empire, in an attempt to defend its old position, introduced in Moldavia (1711) and Wallachia (1716) the “Phanariot regime,” (until 1821), under which the Sublime Porte appointed in the two principalities Greek voivodes recruited from the Phanar district of Istanbul and considered faithful to the Turks. That was a time when the Ottoman political control and economic exploitation increased and corruption spread;

Many wars were fought by Austria and Russia against the Ottoman Empire (1710-1711, 1716-1718, 1735-1739, 1768-1774, 1787-1792, 1806-1812, 1828-1829, 1853-1856): those battles took place on Romanian soil, always accompanied by a foreign military occupation, which was often maintained long after the war proper was over. Thus the Romanian lands endured not only through devastation and irrecoverable losses, but also through population displacements and painful territory amputations.

Romania proclaimed its independence from the Ottoman Empire on May 9, 1877, and participated alongside Russia in the war against the Turks. In 1881 Romania became a kingdom, an event that marked of the country both domestically and internationally. The continual threat posed by Russia determined the leadership of the country to enter into an alliance with the Central Powers in 1883. With the achievement of national independence, Romanians in neighboring territories still under foreign domination began to look to Bucharest for inspiration.

Modern History: The peace treaty of 1829 signed at Adrianople (today Edirne) ended the Russian-Turkish conflict of 1828-1829, which had broken out in the final stage of the war for national liberation fought by the Greeks; this treaty greatly weakened the Ottoman suzerainty. In the first half of the 19th century, the Romanian principalities began to distance themselves from the Islamic Ottoman world and tune into the spiritual space of Western Europe. Ideas, currents, attitudes from the West were more than welcome in the Romanian world, which was undergoing an irreversible process of modernization. An awareness that all Romanians belong to the same nation was generalized, and the union into one single independent state became the ideal of many Romanians. The modern Romanian nation was founded in the winter of 1862; its capital was chosen to be Bucharest.

Sephardic Romania: Documents demonstrate Spanish Jews in Wallachia as early as 1496. These most likely stemming as a result of the Iberian diaspora, and the acceptance into (Ottoman) Romania and other Bakan states by Sultan Beyazid II. In 1718 the first Hahambasi (Betalel Cohen) the son of Rabbi Naftali Cohen, Sultan Mustafa III’s protege, was appointed by Romanian Prince Alexandre Ipsilanti. These Hahambasi would be in charge of all the Jews in the entire country. His office was in Jassy, but he still had juristdiction of Jews in the southern territories of Wallachia. This cheif Rabbi had officers spread through out the Romanian state called vekil Hahambasi, which were located in major cities. The office of the Hahambasi lasted until 1834 when it dissolved. Instead of the Prince making a Rabbi the Hahambasi, it was now up to the Jewish people to elect their own spiritual leader. In losing the title of Hahambasi, future spiritual leaders also lost the rights (and protections) that came along with it.

Most of the original Jewish population of Romania arrived from Turkey and the Balkans and was made up of Sephardim. However, by the nineteenth century, the majority of the Jewish population of Romania was made up of Ashkenazim, the result of waves of Yiddish speaking immigrants from Galicia and Russia. Transylvania was on a trade route between the orient and the west, and northern and southern Europe. Because of this, the first Jews arrived on these trade routes to Transylvania from Turkey and the Balkans. The first Jewish community was in Alba Julia, which has records of Jewish residency as early as 1591. At one time an independent state, Transylvania was later incorporated as part of Hungary, and then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Jews continued to migrate to Transylvania in small numbers throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, even though there were residency restrictions until 1848.

The number of Jews in historic Transylvania jumped from two thousand in 1766, to thirty thousand in 1880. Timosoara, a city bordering the Balkan states in the Banat region of Transylvania, was first settled by Turkish Sephardim, prior to German culture becoming dominant in later centuries. In 1762, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi synagogues were built in Transylvania, with many Sephardic Jews known to be living in various towns such as Dej, Carei and Cluj. For many years small Sephardic communities of Ladino speakers functioned in the port towns of the Danube and in Southern Dobrudja.

Romania’s Jewish population entered the principalities in the 1800s, moving south out of the Russian Empire: for that reason the northern province of Moldavia became center of Jewish life. In 1803 there were only 15,000 Jews in Moldavia, but by 1859 there were 118,000; and in 1899 there were 197,000. Fewer Jews lived in Wallachia: 4,000 in 1831; in 1859 the figure was 9,000; and in 1899, the total reached 61,000. Another 75,000 Romanian Jews emigrated in the period 1881-1914, mostly to the United States. Many Jews of Romania absorbed the naming practices of their community; this is not unlike elsewhere throughout history. Many of the Jews took the typical Romanian suffixes of -escu, -eanu and -aru and Romanianized their original traditional surnames. The various Sephardic-specific surnames of Romania demonstrated the multi-ethnic roots of the Sephardim. This includes the names: Aftakion, Alcaly, Alfanderi, Behar, Graniani, Medina, Mitani, Nahmias, Papo, and Semo. These representing Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Arabic countries.

The Holocaust and Beyond: In the summer of 1940 Romania succumbed to German pressure and transferred Bessarabia and part of Bukovina to the Soviet Union, northern Transylvania to Hungary, and southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria (the territory that remained being called Old Romania). Anti-Semitism flared, and in 1941 many pogroms occured. Jewish homes were looted, shops burned, and many synagogues desecrated, including two that were razed to the ground (the Great Sephardi Synagogue [Kahal Grande] and the old bet ha-midrash). Some of the leaders of the Bucharest community were imprisoned in the community council building, and worshipers were ejected from synagogues by force. Over 264,000 Jews perished in Nazi death camps during World War II. Most of the survivors fled postwar communism and emigrated to Israel or the United States.

Following is a more detailed account of the horrors of xenophobia that Romanian Jews experienced;

Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were the favorite target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society - from the late-19th century debate over the “Jewish Question” and the Jewish residents’ right to citizenship, to the genocide carried out by Romania as part of The Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of aliyah, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania’s present-day Jewish community.

The earliest Jewish presence in what would become Moldavia was recorded in Cetatea Albă (1330); in Wallachia, they were first attested in the 1550s, living in Bucharest. During the second half of the 14th century, the future territory of Romania became an important place of refuge for Jews expelled from the Kingdom of Hungary and Poland by King Louis I. In Transylvania, Hungarian Jews were recorded in Saxon citadels around 1492.

Prince Roman I (1391-1394) exempted the Jews from military service, in exchange for a tax of 3 löwenthaler per person. Also in Moldavia, Stephen the Great (1457-1504) treated Jews with consideration. Isaac ben Benjamin Shor of Iaşi (Isak Bey, originally employed by Uzun Hassan) was appointed stolnic, being subsequently advanced to the rank of logofăt; he continued to hold this office under Bogdan the Blind (1504-1517), the son and successor of Stephen.

At this time both Danubian Principalities came under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, and a number of Sephardim living in Istanbul migrated to Wallachia, while Jews from Poland and the Holy Roman Empire settled in Moldavia. Although they took an important part in Ottoman government and formed a large part of a community of foreign creditors and traders, Jews were harassed by the hospodars of the two Principalities. Moldavia’s Prince Ştefăniţă (1522) deprived the Jewish merchants of almost all the rights given to them by his two predecessors; Petru Rareş confiscated Jewish wealth in 1541, after alleging that Jews in the cattle trade had engaged in tax evasion. Alexandru Lăpuşneanu (first rule: 1552-61) persecuted the community alongside other social categories, until he was dethroned by Jacob Heraclides, a Greek Lutheran, who was lenient to his Jewish subjects; Lăpuşneanu did not renew his persecutions after his return on the throne in 1564. The role of Ottoman and local Jews in financing various princes increased as Ottoman economic demands were mounting after 1550 (in the 1570s, the influential Jewish Duke of the Archipelago, Joseph Nasi, backed both Heraclides and Lăpuşneanu to the throne); several violent incidents throughout the period were instigated by princes unable to repay their debts.

During the first short reign of Peter the Lame (1574-1579) the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled. In 1582, he succeeded in regaining his rule over the country with the help of the Jewish physician Benveniste, who was a friend of the influential Solomon Ashkenazi; the latter then exerted his influence with the Prince in favor of his coreligionists.

In Wallachia, Prince Alexandru II Mircea (1567-1577) engaged as his private secretary and counselor Isaiah ben Joseph, who used his influence on behalf of the Jews. In 1573 Isaiah was dismissed, owing to court intrigues, but he was not harmed any further, and subsequently left for Moldavia (where he entered the service of Muscovy’s Grand Prince Ivan the Terrible). Through the efforts of Solomon Ashkenazi, Aron Tiranul was placed on the throne of Moldavia; nevertheless, the new ruler persecuted and executed nineteen Jewish creditors in Iaşi, who were decapitated without process of law. At around the same time, in Wallachia, the violent repression of creditors peaked under Michael the Brave, who, after killing Turkish creditors in Bucharest (1594), probably enagaged in violence against Jews settled south of the Danube during his campaign in Rumelia (while maintaining good relations with Transylvanian Jews).

Modern Age: In 1623, the Jews in Transylvania were awarded certain privileges by Prince Gabriel Bethlen, who aimed to attract entrepreneurs from Ottoman lands into his country; the grants were curtailed during following decades, when Jews were only allowed to settle in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia). Among the privileges granted was one allowing Jews to wear traditional dress; eventually, the authorities in Gyulafehérvár decided (in 1650 and 1741), to allow Jews to wear only clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity.

The status of Jews who had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy was established in Wallachia by Matei Basarab’s Pravila de la Govora and in Moldavia by Vasile Lupu’s Carte româneascǎ de învăţătură. The latter ruler (1634-1653) treated the Jews with consideration until the appearance of the Cossacks (1648), who marched against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and who, while crossing the region, killed many Jews; the violence, led many Ashkenazi Jews from Poland took refuge in Moldavia and Wallachia, establishing small but stable communities. Massacres and forced conversions by the Cossacks occurred in 1652, when the latter came to Iaşi on the occasion of the Vasile Lupu’s daughter marriage to Timush, the son of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and during the rule of Gheorghe Ştefan.

According to Anton Maria Del Chiaro, secretary of the Wallachian princes between 1710-1716, the Jewish population of Wallachia was required to respect a certain dresscode. Thus, they were prohibited from wearing clothes of other color than black or violet, or to wear yellow or red boots. Nevertheless, the Romanian scholar Andrei Oişteanu argued that such ethnic and religious social stigma was uncommon in Moldavia and Wallachia, as well as throughout the Eastern Orthodox areas of Europe.

The first blood accusation in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made April 5, 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamţ were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes. The instigator was a baptized Jew who had helped to carry the body of a child, murdered by Christians, into the courtyard of the synagogue. On the next day five Jews were killed, others were maimed, and every Jewish house was pillaged, while the representatives of the community were imprisoned and tortured. Meanwhile, some influential Jews appealed to Prince Nicholas Mavrocordatos (the first Phanariote ruler) in Iaşi, who ordered an investigation resulting in the freeing of those arrested. This was the first time that the Orthodox clergy participated in attacks on Jews. It was due to the clergy’s instigations that in 1714 a similar charge was brought against the Jews of the city of Roman - the murder by a group of Roman Catholics of a Christian girl-servant to Jewish family was immediately blamed on Jews; every Jewish house was plundered, and two prominent Jews were hanged, before the real criminals were discovered by the authorities.

Under Constantin Brâncoveanu, Wallachian Jews were recognized as a special guild in Bucharest, led by a starost. Jews in both Wallachia and Moldavia were subject to the Hakham Bashi in Iaşi, but soon the Bucharest starost assumed several religious duties. Overtaxed and persecuted under Ştefan Cantacuzino (1714-1716), Wallachian Jews obtained valuable privileges during Nicholas Mavrocordatos’ rule (1716-1730) in that country (the Prince notably employed the Jewish savant Daniel de Fonseca at his court). Another anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s, and was encouraged by the visit of Ephram II, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

In 1726, in the Bessarabian borough of Oniţcani, four Jews were accused of having kidnapped a five-year old child, of killing him on Easter and of collecting his blood in a barrel. They were tried at Iaşi under the supervision of Moldavian Prince Mihai Racoviţă, and eventually acquitted following diplomatic protests. The event was echoed in several contemporary chronicles and documents — for example, the French ambassador to the Porte, Jean-Baptiste Louis Picon, remarked that such an accusation was no longer accepted in “civilized countries”. The most obvious effects on the condition of the Jewish inhabitants of Moldavia were witnessed during the reign of John Mavrocordatos (1744-1747): a Jewish farmer in the vicinity of Suceava reported the prince to the Porte for allegedly using his house to rape a number of kidnapped Jewish women; Mavrocordatos had his accuser hanged. This act aroused the anger of Mahmud I’s kapucu in Moldavia, and the prince paid the penalty with the loss of his throne.

Russo-Turkish Wars: During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages in almost every town and village in the country. When peace was restored, both princes, Alexander Mavrocordatos of Moldavia and Nicholas Mavrogheni of Wallachia, pledged their special protection to the Jews, whose condition remained favorable until 1787, when both Janissaries and the Imperial Russian Army engaged in pogroms.

The community was also subject to persecutions by the locals. Jewish children were seized and forcibly baptized. The ritual-murder accusation became widespread; one made at Galaţi in 1797 led to exceptionally severe results - the Jews were attacked by a large mob, driven from their homes, robbed, waylaid on the streets, and many killed on the spot, while some were forced into the Danube and drowned; others who took refuge in the synagogue were burned to death in the building; a few escaped after being given protection and refuge by a priest. In 1803, shortly before his death, the Wallachian Metropolitan Iacob Stamati instigated attacks on the Bucharest community by publishing his Înfruntarea jidovilor (”Facing the Jews”), which pretended to be the confession of a former rabbi; however, Jews were offered refuge by Stamati’s replacement, Veniamin Costachi. A seminal event occurred in 1804, when ruler Constantine Ypsilanti dismissed accusations of ritual murder as “the unfounded opinion” of “stupid people”, and ordered that their condemnation be read in churches throughout Wallachia; the allegations no longer surfaced during the following period.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, the Russian invasion was again accompanied by massacres of the Jews. Kalmyk irregular soldiers in Ottoman service, who appeared in Bucharest at the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, exercised terror on the city’s Jewish population. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), “They passed daily through the streets inhabited by the latter, spitted children on their lances, and, in the presence of their parents, roasted them alive and devoured them”. At around the same time, a conflict emerged in Wallachia between Jews under foreign protection (sudiţi) and local ones (hrisovoliţi), after the latter tried to impose a single administration for the community, a matter which was finally settled in favor of the hrisovoliţi by Prince Jean Georges Caradja (1813).

In Habsburg-ruled Transylvania, the reforms carried out by Joseph II allowed Jews to settle in towns directly subject to the Hungarian Crown. However, pressured placed on the community remained stringent for the following decades.

By 1825, Jewish population in Wallachia (almost completely Sephardi) was estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 people - of these, the larger part resided in Bucharest (probably as much as 7,000 in 1839); around the same time, Moldavia was home to about 12,000 Jews. In parallel, the Jewish population in Bukovina rose from 526 in 1774 to 11,600 in 1848. In the early 1800s, Jews who sought refuge from Osman Pazvantoğlu’s campaign in the Balkans established communities in Wallachian-ruled Oltenia. In Moldavia, Scarlat Callimachi’s Code (1817) allowed members of the community to purchase urban property, but prevented them from settling in the countryside (while purchasing town property became increasingly difficult due to popular prejudice).

During the Greek War of Independence, which signalled the Wallachian uprising of 1821 and the Danubian Principalities’ occupation by Filiki Eteria troops under Alexander Ypsilantis, Jews were victims of pogroms and persecutions in places such as Fălticeni, Hertsa, Piatra Neamţ, the Secu Monastery, Târgovişte, and Târgu Frumos; Jews in Galaţi managed to escape over the Prut River with assistance from Austrian diplomats. Weakened by the clash between Ypsilantis and Tudor Vladimirescu, the Eterists were massacred by the Ottoman intervention armies - during this episode, Jewish communities engaged in retaliations in Secu and Slatina.

Following the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople (which allowed the two Principalities to freely engage in foreign trade), Moldavia, where commercial niches had been largely left unoccupied, became a target for migration of Ashkenazi Jews persecuted in Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria - by 1838, their number seems to have reached 80,000, and over 195,000, or almost 12% of the country’s population, in 1859 (with an additional 50,000 passing through to Wallachia between the two estimates).

Despite initial interdictions under the Russian occupation of 1829 (when it was first regulated that non-Christians were not to be regarded as citizens), many of the new immigrants became leaseholders of estates and tavern-keepers, serving to increase both the revenue and demands of boyars - leading in turn to an increase in economic pressures over those working the land or buying products (usual prejudice against Jews accused tavern-keepers of encouraging alcoholism). At the same time, several Jews rose to prominence and high social status - most families involved in Moldavian banking around the 1850s were of Jewish origin. After 1832, following adoption of the Organic Statute, Jewish children are accepted in schools in the two Principalities only if they wore the same clothing as others. In Moldavia, authorities forced the community to abandon its traditional dress code through the 1847 decree of Prince Mihail Sturdza.

Before the Revolutions of 1848, which found their parallel in the Wallachian revolution, many restrictive laws against the Jews had been enacted; although they had some destructive effects, they were never strictly enforced. In various ways, Jews took part in the Wallachian revolt - Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, the painter, distinguished himself in the revolutionary cause, and paid for his activity with his life (being tortured to death by Austrian authorities in Budapest). The major document to be codified by the 1848 Wallachian revolutionaries, the Islaz Proclamation, called for “the emancipation of Israelites and political rights for all compatriots of different faiths”.

After the close of the Crimean War the struggle for the union of the two principalities began. The Jews were sought after by both parties, Unionists and anti-Unionists, each of which promised them full equality; and proclamations to this effect were issued (1857-1858). In 1857, the community began issuing its first magazine, Israelitul Român, edited by the Romanian radical Iuliu Barasch. This process of gradual integration resulted in the creation of an informal Romanian identity assumed by Jews, while conversion to Christianity, despite encouragement by the authorities, remained confined to exceptional cases.

Under Alexander John Cuza: From the beginning of the reign of Alexander John Cuza (1859-1866), the first ruler (Domnitor) of the united principalities, the Jews became a prominent factor in the politics of the country. This period was, however, inaugurated by another riot motivated by blood libel accusations, begun during Easter 1859 in Galaţi.

Regulations on clothing were confirmed inside Moldavia by two orders of Mihail Kogălniceanu, Minister of Internal Affairs (issues in 1859 and 1860 respectively). Following adoption of the 1859 regulation, soldiers and civilians would walk the streets of Iaşi and some other Moldavian towns, assaulting Jews, using scissors to shred their clothing, but also to cut their beards or their sidelocks; drastic measures applied by the Army Headquarters put a stop to such turmoil.

In 1864, Cuza, owing to difficulties between his government and the general assembly, dissolved the latter and decided to submit a draft of a constitution granting universal suffrage. He proposed creating two chambers (of senators and deputies respectively), to extend the franchise to all citizens, and to emancipate the peasants from forced labor (expecting to nullify the remaining influence of the landowners - no longer boyars after the land reform). In the process, Cuza also expected financial support from both the Jews and the Armenians - it appears that he kept the latter demand reduced, asking for only 40,000 Austrian guilder (the standard gold coins; about US$ 90,000 at the exchange rate of the time) from the two groups. The Armenians discussed the matter with the Jews, but they were not able to come to a satisfactory agreement in the matter.

While Cuza was pressing in his demands, the Jewish community debated the method of assessment. The rich Jews, for unclear reasons, refused to advance the money, and the middle class argued that the sum would not lead to tangible enough results; Religious Jews insisted that such rights would only interfere with the exercise of their religion. Cuza, on being informed that the Jews hesitated to pay their share, inserted in his draft of a constitution a clause excluding from the right of suffrage all who did not profess Christianity.

1860s and 1870s: When Charles von Hohenzollern succeeded Cuza in 1866 as Carol I of Romania, the first event that confronted him in the capital was a riot against the Jews. A draft of a constitution was then submitted by the government, Article 6 of which declared that “religion is no obstacle to citizenship”; but, “with regard to the Jews, a special law will have to be framed in order to regulate their admission to naturalization and also to civil rights”. On June 30, 1866, the Bucharest Synagogue was desecrated and demolished (it was rebuilt in the same year, then restored in 1932 and 1945). Many Jews were beaten, maimed, and robbed. As a result, Article 6 was withdrawn and Article 7 was added to the 1866 Constitution; it read that “only such aliens as are of the Christian faith may obtain citizenship”.

For the following decades, the issue of Jewish rights occupied the forefront of the Regat’s political scene. With few notable exceptions most Romanian intellectuals began professing anti-Semitism; its most virulent form was the one present with advocates of Liberalism, especially Moldavians, who argued that Jewish immigration had prevented the rise of an ethnic Romanian middle class. The first examples of modern prejudice were the Moldavian Fracţiunea liberă şi independentă (later blended into the National Liberal Party, PNL) and the Bucharest group formed around Cezar Bolliac. Their discourse saw Jews as non-assimilated and perpetually foreign. This claim was, however, challenged by some contemporary sources, and by the eventual acceptance of all immigrants other than Jews.

Anti-Semitism was carried into the PNL’s mainstream, and was officially enforced under the premierships of Ion Brătianu. During his first years in office, Brătianu reinforced and applied old discrimination laws, insisting that Jews were not allowed to settle in the countryside (and relocating those that had done so), while declaring many Jewish urban inhabitants to be vagrants and expelling them from the country. According to the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia: “A number of such Jews who proved their Romanian birth were forced across the Danube, and when the Ottoman Empire refused to receive them, were thrown into the river and drowned. Almost every country in Europe was shocked at these barbarities. The Romanian government was warned by the powers; and Brătianu was subsequently dismissed from office”. Cabinets formed by the Conservative Party, although including Junimea’s leaders, did not do much to improve the Jews’ condition - mainly due to PNL opposition.

Nonetheless, during this same era, Romania was the cradle of Yiddish theatre. The Russian-born Abraham Goldfaden started the first professional Yiddish theatre company in Iaşi in 1876 and for several years, especially during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 Romania was the home of Yiddish theatre. While its center of gravity would move first to Russia, then London, then New York City, both Bucharest and Iaşi would continue to figure prominently in its history over the next century.

When Brătianu resumed leadership, Romania faced the emerging conflict in the Balkans, and saw its chance to declare independence from Ottoman suzerainty by dispatching its troops on the Russian side in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), which stipulated (Article 44) that the non-Christians in Romania (including both Jews and Muslims in the newly-acquired region of Northern Dobruja) should receive full citizenship. After a prolonged debate at home and diplomatic negotiations abroad, the Romanian government ultimately agreed (1879) to abrogate Article 7 of its constitution. This was, however, reformulated to make procedures very difficult: “the naturalization of aliens not under foreign protection should in every individual case be decided by Parliament” (the action involved, among others, a ten-year term before the applicant was given an evaluation). The gesture was doubled by a show of compliance - 883 Jews, participants in the war, were naturalized in a body by a vote of both chambers.

Fifty-seven persons voted upon as individuals were naturalized in 1880; 6, in 1881; 2, in 1882; 2, in 1883; and 18, from 1886 to 1900; in all, 85 Jews in twenty-one years, 27 of whom in the meantime died; ca. 4,000 people had obtained citizenship by 1912. Various laws were passed until the pursuit of virtually all careers was made dependent on the possession of political rights, which only Romanians could exercise; more than 40% of Jewish working men, including manual labourers, were forced into unemployment by such legislation. Similar laws were passed in regard to Jews exercising liberal professions.

In 1893, a piece of legislation was voted to deprive Jewish children of the right to be educated in the public schools - they were to be received only if and where children of citizens had been provided for, and their parents were required to pay preferential tuition fees. In 1898, it was passed into law that Jews were to be excluded from secondary schools and the universities. Another notable measure was the expulsion of vocal Jewish activists as “objectionable aliens” (under the provisions of an 1881 law), including those of Moses Gaster and Elias Schwarzfeld.

The courts exacted the Oath More Judaico in its most offensive form - it was only abolished in 1904, following criticism in the French press. In 1892, when the United States addressed a note to the signatory powers of the Berlin treaty on the matter, it was attacked by the Romanian press. The Lascăr Catargiu government was, however, concerned - the issue was debated among ministers, and, as a result, the Romanian government issued pamphlets in French, reiterating its accusations against the Jews and maintaining that persecutions were deserved in exchange for the community’s alleged exploitation of the rural population.

The emigration of Romanian Jews on a larger scale commenced soon after 1878; numbers rose and fell, with a major wave of Bessarabian Jews after the Kishinev pogrom in Imperial Russia (1905). The Jewish Encyclopedia wrote in 1905, shortly before the pogrom, “It is admitted that at least 70 per cent would leave the country at any time if the necessary traveling expenses were furnished”. There are no official statistics of emigration; but it is safe to place the minimum number of Jewish emigrants from 1898 to 1904 at 70,000.

Land issues and predominantly Jewish presence among estate leaseholders accounted for the 1907 Romanian Peasants’ Revolt, partly anti-Semitic in message. During the same period, the anti-Jewish message first expanded beyond its National Liberal base (where it was soon an insignificant attitude), to cover the succession of more radical and Moldavian-based organizations founded by A.C. Cuza (his Democratic Nationalist Party, created in 1910, had the first anti-Semitic program in Romanian political history). No longer present in the PNL’s ideology by the 1920s, anti-Semitism also tended to surface in on the left-wing of the political spectrum, in currents originating in Poporanism - which favoured the claim that peasants were being systematically exploited by Jews.

World War I, during which 882 Jewish soldiers died defending Romania (and 825 were decorated), brought about the creation of Greater Romania after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and subsequent treaties. The enlarged state had an increased Jewish population, corresponding with the addition of communities in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania. On signing the treaties, Romania agreed to change its policy towards the Jews, promising to award them both citizenship and minority rights, the effective emancipation of Jews. The 1923 Constitution of Romania sanctioned these requirements, meeting opposition from Cuza’s National-Christian Defense League and rioting by far right students in Iaşi; the land reform carried out by the Ion I. C. Brătianu cabinet also settled problems connected with land tenancy.

Political representation for the Jewish community in the inter-war period was divided between the Jewish Party and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania (the latter was re-established after 1989). During the same period, a division in ritual became apparent between Reform Jews in Transylvania and usually Orthodox ones in the rest of the country (while Bessarabia was the most open to Zionism and especially the socialist Labor Zionism).

The popularity of anti-Jewish messages was, nevertheless, on the rise, and merged itself with the appeal of fascism in the late 1920s - both contributed to the creation and success of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s Iron Guard and the appearance of new types of anti-Semitic discourses (Trăirism and Gândirism). The idea of a Jewish quota in higher education became highly popular among Romanian students and teachers. According to Andrei Oişteanu’s analysis, a relevant number of right-wing intellectuals refused to adopt overt anti-Semitism, which was ill-reputed through its association with A. C. Cuza’s violent discourse; nevertheless, a few years later, such cautions were cast aside, and anti-Semitism became displayed as “spiritual health”.

The first motion to exclude Jews from professional associations came on May 16, 1937, when the Confederation of the Associations of Professional Intellectuals (Confederaţia Asociaţiilor de Profesionişti Intelectuali din România) voted to exclude all Jewish members from its affiliated bodies, calling for the state to withdraw their licenses and reassess their citizenship.Although illegal, the measure was popular and it was commented that, in its case, legality had been supplanted by a “heroic decision”. According to Oişteanu, the initiative had a direct influence on anti-Semitic regulations passed during the following year.

The threat posed by the Iron Guard, the emergence of Nazi Germany as a European power, and his own fascist sympathies, made King Carol II, who was still largely identified as a philo-Semite, adopt racial discrimination as the norm. On January 21, 1938, Carol’s executive (led by Cuza and Octavian Goga) passed a law aimed at reviewing criteria for citizenship (after it cast allegations that previous cabinets had allowed Ukrainian Jews to obtain it illegally), and requiring all Jews who had received citizenship in 1918-1919 to reapply for it (while providing a very short term in which this could be achieved - 20 days); in 1940, the Ion Gigurtu cabinet adopted Romania’s equivalent to the Nuremberg Laws, forbidding Jewish-Christian intermarriage, and defining Jews after racial criteria (a person was Jewish if he or she had a Jewish grandparent on one side of the family).

Between the establishment of the National Legionary State and 1942, 80 anti-Jewish regulations were passed. Starting at the end of October, 1940, the Iron Guard began a massive anti-Semitic campaign, torturing and beating Jews and looting their shops (see Dorohoi Pogrom), culminating in the failed coup and a pogrom in Bucharest, in which 120 Jews were killed. Antonescu eventually stopped the violence and chaos created by the Iron Guard by brutally suppressing the rebellion. By the time Romania entered the war, however, atrocities against the Jews had become common, most notably in the Iaşi pogrom, where over 10,000 Jews were killed in July 1941.

Victims of the Iaşi pogrom

After the fall of the Iron Guard, the Antonescu regime, allied with Nazi Germany, continued the policy of oppression and massacre of Jews, and, to a lesser extent, Roma. In July-August 1941, the yellow badge was imposed by local initiatives in several cities (Iaşi, Bacău, Cernăuţi). A similar measure imposed by the national government lasted only five days (between September 3 and September 8, 1941), before being annulled on Antonescu’s order.However, on local initiative, the badge was still worn especially in the towns of Moldavia, Bessarabia and Bukovina (Bacău, Iaşi, Câmpulung, Botoşani, Cernăuţi, etc.).

According to an international commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, Romania murdered in various forms, between 280,000 to 380,000 Jews in Romania and in the war zone of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria.

In 1941, following the advancing Romanian Army after Operation Barbarossa, and alleged attacks by Jewish “Resistance groups”, Antonescu ordered the deportation to Transnistria, of all Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina (between 80,000 and 150,000), who were considered “Communist agents” by the official propaganda. “Deportation” however was a euphemism, as part of the process was to kill as many Jews as possible before deporting the rest in the “trains of death” to the East. Of those who escaped the initial ethnic cleansing in Bukovina and Bessarabia, only very few managed to survive trains and the concentration camps set up in Transnistria. Further killings perpetrated by Antonescu’s death squads (documents prove his direct orders and involvement) targeted the Jewish population that the Romanian Army managed to round up when occupying Transnistria. Over one hundred thousand of these were in massacres staged in such places as Odessa (the Odessa Massacre - when Romanian troops shot over 100,000 Jews during the autumn of 1941), Bogdanovka, Akmecetka in 1941 and 1942.

Antonescu did halt deportations despite German pressure in 1943, as he began to seek peace with the Allies, although at the same time he levied heavy taxes and forced labor on the remaining Jewish communities. Also, sometimes with the encouragement of Antonescu’s regime, thirteen boats left Romania for the British Mandate of Palestine during the war, carrying 13,000 Jews (two of these ships sunk, and the effort was discontinued after German pressure was applied).

Half of the 320,000 Jews living in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the former Dorohoi County in Romania were murdered within months of the entry of the country into World War II during 1941. Even after the initial killing, Jews in Moldavia, Bukovina and Bessarabia were subject to frequent pogroms, and were concentrated into ghettos from which they were sent to concentration camps, including camps built and run by Romanians. The number of deaths in this area is not certain, but even the lowest respectable estimates run to about 250,000 Jews (and 25,000 Roma) in these eastern regions, while 120,000 of Transylvania’s 150,000 Jews died at the hands of the Fascist Hungarians later in the war. Romanian soldiers also worked with the German Einsatzkommando to massacre Jews in conquered territories. Antonescu’s government made plans for mass deportations from the Regat to Belzec, but never carried them out.

Nonetheless, in stark contrast to many countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the majority of Romanian Jews survived the war, although they were subject to a wide range of harsh conditions, including forced labor, financial penalties, and discriminatory laws. The number of victims, however, makes Romania count as, according to the Wiesel Commission, “Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, [responsible] for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself”.

Romanian Fascism had been all too viciously and murderously antisemitic; however, unlike its Nazi ally, it had not formulated a “Final Solution” of systematically hunting down and killing every single Jew, and there was no Romanian equivalent to the Wannsee Conference. The killing of Jews was unsystematic, taking place in some places and times but not in others - especially, far more intensively where the Romanian Army was acting as an occupying force rather than in Romania’s own sovereign territory. Fortunately for the Romanian Jews, the Nazis never got a chance to take direct control of the process and “systematise” it, as they did in Hungary at mid-1944.

Post-War: According to the World Jewish Congress, there were 428,312 Jews in Romania in 1947. Mass emigration ensued, much of it to the British Mandate of Palestine and later Israel, and much of it technically illegal. By 1956, there were 144,236 Jews in Romania. From 1948 until 1960, more than 200,000 Romanian Jews went to Israel, reducing the population in Romania to less than 100,000 by the 1960s.

During the period of transition towards a communist regime in Romania, following Soviet occupation, Jewish society and culture were subject to the same increasingly tight control by the authorities. The community leader Wilhelm Filderman was arrested in 1945, and had to flee the country in 1948. On April 22, 1946, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej attended a meeting of Jewish organizations and called for the creation of a new body, the Jewish Democratic Committee, which was in reality a section of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).

After the proclamation of the People’s Republic, the government formed by the PCR outlawed all Jewish organizations at a meeting on June 10–June 11, 1948, stating that “the party must take a stand on every question concerning the Jews of Romania and fight vigorously against reactionary nationalist Jewish currents [that is, Zionism]“. In 1952-1953, the Stalinist anti-Semitic charge of “rootless cosmopolitanism” brought the purging of the party’s own leadership (including Ana Pauker); the charge was then inflicted on the larger part of the Jewish community, beginning with a trial engineered by Iosif Chişinevschi. Jews who were perceived as Zionists were given harsh labour sentences in communist prisons such as Piteşti (where they were subject to torture and brainwashing experiments; several died). The 1952 trial of engineers made responsible for the failure of the Danube-Black Sea Canal project also involved allegations of Zionism (notably aimed at Aurel Rozei-Rozenberg, who was eventually executed).

The dwindling Jewish community in Romania numbers about 9,000 to 15,000 out of a total population of 23.5 million. This population is mostly Ashkenazic Jews, but at one time many Sephardim lived with in Romania’s borders. Today the major centers are in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj and Oradea. Jewish life is also fostered in some smaller communities, and relics of the past are preserved in locations where there are no longer any Jews. The Federation of Jewish Communities is the main coordinating body for Jewish activities, and its publications and symposia are well covered by the Romanian media. It publishes a monthly, Realitatea Evreiasca. The situation for the Jews of Romania later improved, but the community has shrunk, mainly through aliyah.

List of Famous Romanian Jews:

Academics
Aaron Aaronsohn, botanist
J. J. Benjamin, historian
Nicolae Cajal, virologist and Jewish community leader
Ştefan Cazimir, literary critic
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, sociologist and Marxist theorist
Lazăr Edeleanu, chemist
David Emmanuel, mathematician
Zicman Feider, biologist, acarologist
Herman Finer, political scientist
Moses Gaster, chakham, Hebrew linguist
Alexandru Graur, linguist
Lucien Goldmann [philosopher, critic, sociologist]
Joseph M. Juran, industrial engineer
Ernest Klein, linguist
Peter George Oliver Freund, physicist
Liviu Librescu, physicist
Mario Livio, astrophysicist
George Lusztig, mathematician
Edward Luttwak, economist and historian
Solomon Marcus, mathematician
Meinhard E. Mayer, physicist
Serge Moscovici, social psychologist
Victor Neumann, historian and political analyst
Andrei Oişteanu, historian and anthropologist
Zigu Ornea, literary critic
Julius Popper, explorer
Simion Sanielevici, mathematician
Iosif Sava, musicologist and television host
Alice Săvulescu, botanist
Isaac Jacob Schoenberg, mathematician
Itic Şvarţ-Kara, historian, literary and theater critic
Heimann Hariton Tiktin, linguist
Vladimir Tismăneanu, historian and political analyst
David Wechsler, psychologist

Artists
Avigdor Arikha, painter
Victor Brauner, painter and photographer
Sorel Etrog, sculptor
André François, painter and graphic artist (Jewish father)
Idel Ianchelevici, sculptor
Marcel Iancu, architect and painter
Iosif Iser, painter
Isidore Isou, Letterist
Barbu Iscovescu, painter
M. H. Maxy, painter
Jules Perahim, painter (surrealist) and graphic artist
Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, painter
Reuven Rubin, painter
Lola Schmierer-Roth, painter
Arthur Segal, painter
Daniel Spoerri, assemblage artist and author(Jewish father)
Saul Steinberg, cartoonist
Nicolae Vermont, painter and graphic artist

Business people
Max Auschnitt, financier
Mauriciu Blank, financier
Aristide Blank, financier and activist
Emil Calmanovici, financier and communist activist
Jacques Elias, banker, landowner, manufacturer
Hillel Manoah, banker
Iosif Samitca, publisher
Ralian Samitca, publisher
Ignat Samitca, publisher

Film and stage figures
Israil Bercovici, playwright
Christian Calson, director/writer
I.A.L. Diamond, screenwriter
Abraham Goldfaden,founder of Yiddish-language theater
John Houseman, actor (Jewish father)
Marin Karmitz, director, producer
Elina Löwensohn, actress
Sigmund Mogulesko
Maia Morgenstern (1962 - ) film and stage actress
Bernard Natan, film producer
Ovitz family, circus actors and traveling musicians
Edward G. Robinson, actor
Abba Schoengold
Iulian Schwartz, actor and scholar
Simcha Schwartz, theater director and critic
Dumitru Solomon, playwright
Jacob Sternberg, director
Cambos Rozina actress israel

Musicians
Bill Averbach, composer, klezmer musician
Moshe Bazian, cantor
Miriam Fried, violinist
Alma Gluck, soprano
Clara Haskil, pianist
Philip Herschkowitz, music theorist and composer
Mandru Katz, pianist
Sammy Lerner, composer
Yoel Levi, conductor
György Ligeti, composer
Radu Lupu, pianist
Silvia Marcovici, violinist
Joseph Moskowitz, klezmer musician
Moishe Oysher, cantor and singer
Arnold Rosé, violinist
Lya Stern, violinist, teacher
Richard Stein, light music composer (Sanie cu zurgalai)
Beverly Sills, opera singer

Political figures
Martin Abern, Trotskyist activist
Radu F. Alexandru, politician
Colette Avital, politician
Olga Bancic, communist activist
Silviu Brucan, communist politician and dissident
Simion Bughici, communist politician
Iosif Chişinevschi, communist politician
Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea, communist activist
David Fabian,communist activist
Max Goldstein, communist activist
Remus Koffler, communist activist
David Korner, Trotskyist activist
Alex Kozinski, judge
Serge Klarsfeld, anti-Nazi activist
Samuel Leibowitz, attorney
Karpel Lippe, Zionist activist
Vasile Luca, communist politician
Gheorghe Gaston Marin, communist politician
Nati Meir, politician
Alexandru Nicolschi, communist politician
Saul Ozias, communist politician
Ana Pauker, communist politician
Marcel Pauker, communist politician
Mircea Răceanu, diplomat and dissident (Jewish father)
Leonte Răutu, communist politician
Mihail Roller, communist politician
Valter Roman, communist politician
Petre Roman, politician (Jewish father)
Solomon Tinkelman, communist activist
Leonte Tismăneanu, communist politician
Sorin Toma, communist activist
Ghizela Vass, communist activist
Belu Zilber, communist activist

Religious figures
Ernest Klein, rabbi
Moses Rosen, rabbi
Moses Josef Rubin, rabbi
Alexandru Şafran, rabbi
Meir Shapiro, rabbi
Nicolae Steinhardt, Christian Orthodox priest (Jewish father)
Richard Wurmbrand, minister of religion

Sportspeople
Abraham Baratz, chess player
Ernie Grunfeld, basketball player
Leon Rotman, canoeist
Angelica Rozeanu, table tennis player
Andre Spitzer, fencing master and coach
Alexandru Tyroler, chess player
Bernardo Wexler, chess player
Kevin Youkilis, first baseman for the Boston Red Sox
Victor Zilberman, boxer

Writers
Iuliu Barasch, physician and writer
Max (Marcel) Blecher, writer
Srul Bronshtein, poet
Nina Cassian, poet
Paul Celan, poet
Andrei Codrescu, poet and essayist
Vladimir Colin, short story writer and novelist
Radu Cosaşu, short story writer and journalist
Emil Dorian, poet and writer
Virgil Duda, writer,and journalist
Bluma Finkelstein, poet and essayist
Benjamin Fondane, poet, playwright, and literary critic
Abraham Goldfaden, poet and playwright
Dinu Hervian, journalist, writer
Isidore Isou, poet
Irving Layton, poet
Gherasim Luca, poet
Isac Ludo, novelist
Norman Manea, novelist
Cilibi Moise, storyteller and humorist
Saşa Pană, poet and short story writer
Ion Pribeagu,poet and essayist
Maurice Samuel, novelist
Benjamin Schwarzfeld, writer and educator
Elias Schwarzfeld, historian and novelist
Moses Schwarzfeld, writer and journalist
Wilhelm Schwarzfeld, essayist and journalist
Aurel Storin, essayist, journalist and poet
Mihail Sebastian, playwright
Nicolae Steinhardt, writer (Jewish father)
Alexandru Toma, poet
Tristan Tzara, poet and essayist
Tudor Vianu, literary critic
Ion Vianu, essayist, novelist, and journalist
Ilarie Voronca, poet and essayist
Elie Wiesel, writer

Map of Jewish Communities in Romania

The Bucharest Synagogue

The Synagogue of Braşov (built 1901)

The Great Synagogue in Iaşi, built ca.1670

She was the other side of the image of G-d. For G-d is not just a boundless light, beyond all things. G-d is something that is here now, within all things, giving them life, being whatever they are being. In her source above, she is “the Shechina” — the Divine Presence That Dwells Within.

This is what drove the earthly Chavah to eat the fruit: this yearning to be within, to experience the taste of life, to be immersed in it. With this she transgressed — she carried herself from the realm of the Divine into a world where all that is real is the here and now, where there is no vantage point from which to discern good from evil, no light to discern the fruit from its husk. And she took with herself the Shechina and she imprisoned Her as well, so that havoc ensued throughout the cosmos.

But the desire behind her transgression was the holy yen of the Shechina to permeate all. And in the end, she will succeed, and life within will also be G-dly.

As long as the drama of this universe remains incomplete, the Shechina is silent, she does not sing. We see the world She vitalizes, but we do not hear her voice within it. In all people’s minds, She plays a secondary role — for her husband conquers and subdues, while she, they say, only provides life and nurture. Such is the mindset of an immature world.

There is a time-yet-to-come, when the secret of the Inner Light will be revealed. Then the Mother of Life will sing loud without bound.

Rachel is the embodiment of the Shechina as She descends to care for Her children, even to travel their journey of exile with them. And so she ensures they will return. Rachel is the world of revealed words and deeds. She held beauty that Jacob could perceive and desire. But Leah was too lofty, too far beyond all things, and so Jacob could not attach himself to her in the same way.

Her sister, Leah is also our Jewish mother, the Shechina. It is from Leah that almost all of the Jewish nation descends. She is the transcendent, concealed world; those hidden things of the Divine Mind too deep for men to fathom. She is the Sphere of Royalty as She rises above to receive in silent meditation.

If the Shechina is a diamond and each woman is a different facet, then Rachel is the spark of hope that glistens in each one and emanates from deep inside. The spark that never became detached, that remains above and beyond even while the Shechina that contains it sinks below. A resilient spark that all the rivers of exile cannot wash away and oceans of tears cannot extinguish.

With these words, Rebecca betrothed herself to Isaac and rose to become mother of two nations; Jacob and Esau. It was her act of giving and her eagerness to do good, as she took the opportunity seeking out with joy and delight, with all her soul and being. She implanted this goodness within us as our inheritance. In the Bible the story of the union of Rebecca and Isaac is told and retold three times. In this story lies the birth of the Jewish people and their purpose. In it lies the secret for which all the cosmos was created: the fusion of opposites, the paradox and beauty of life.

It is the servant Abraham, the matchmaker, who speaks to the Master of the universe from the sincerity of his heart, who is obsessed with his mission and delights in its every step. It is each and any one of us. We are here to unite heaven and earth. And in the union of Man and Woman is found all these.

Miriam is a young girl who stands amidst the reeds that embrace the river’s bank, still and quiet, watching from afar, making sure her brother Moses would survive. She is the guardian of the promise, of all her people have yearned for, and she will not allow that promise to leave her sight.

Miriam means bitter, for it is a bitterness that drives her, all the bitterness born of her people’s harsh lot of slavery under Pharoah. It is her powerful vision, one that will transform the bitter to sweet, the darkness of exile to the great light of freedom. In her merit, we were redeemed from slavery. And in the merit of women of faith today, the entire world will be redeemed of its darkness.

For greater incite into Miriam as a prophetess read Anthology of the Prophets.

In the peaceful shade of an ancient date palm in the hills of Ephraim, you would find a wise woman named Deborah, a prophetess to whom all of Israel streamed for counsel, for guidance and for hope.

She summoned Barak, a mighty warrior, and instructed him to wage battle against the oppressors of her people. But Barak insisted he would not go unless Deborah go with him, and for that she scorned him. Deborah did not see greatness in emulating the qualities of manhood; in fighting and winning and conquering, but as a mother in Israel, as a giver of life, nurturing her people with kindness and with faith.

Ruth is the paradigm of those ancient souls that discover they are lost and yearn to return home to the truth of the Torah. The journey for lost souls, is a challenge along twisted and even bizarre paths, but once the soul recognizes the precious Torah a spark of pure holiness revives its inner being. And through the story of ruth we come to realize that great things will come about. Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David, redeemer of Israel. And, many millennia later, as the final redeemer, the Messiah.